On The Bus
by venusianeye
Summary: A Fairly Tame Journey to the Hearts of some Gay Kids.  Shisui gets brilliant ideas at 2AM and Itachi agrees to them.  Present-day AU, Shisui POV, nonsensical, lime.
1. Chapter 1

Shisui hadn't technically _seen_ Itachi since the last godawful 4th of July party at which the Uchiha 'adults' all got slightly too tipsy to keep their stiff upper lips and started trash-talking the Hyuugas like it was the goddamn national sport, and Shisui stole Itachi's phone to take a few incriminating pictures and also get his number and Itachi took it back with a sourball expression as if Shisui had borrowed his Armani jacket and then used it to blow his nose, but at 2AM the funniest ideas occur to you, and this was one of those times.

So he sent Itachi a brief, explanatory text message, and then continued to wait in the gas-station parking lot, perched on his duffel bag and trying to count, in the dim florescent lighting, just how many nickels he had in his pockets. There were a lot. He had very deep pockets, but unlike the clan, his were literal. Also unlike the clan: his were depressingly finite.

_Im goin hobo 4 a week u coming?_

He didn't have to wait long for a reply; Itachi was the quintessential fastidious child, even if Shisui had _definitely_ woken him up.

_When did you get my number?_

Oooh, that was a tough one. Shisui had to actually think about that for a while, and the empty parking lot - not quite empty, there was a dumpster propped up like a tipsy hooker against the fence in the back - was not exactly bursting with inspiration.

_uh, facebook!_

Genius. It wasn't stalking, Shisui told himself, if it was your boyfriend.

_I don't even have a facebook account_, Shisui's cellphone buzzed at him a few seconds later, Itachi's name somehow very disapproving as it stared up at him from the little LCD screen, and Shisui winced.

_Look, u wanna go wit me or not?_

How many minutes, Shisui wondered, do people spend in their lives, waiting in gas stations? Surely it tallies up to a few days, in the end. Assuming you live long enough. But that's the trick, isn't it - living long enough. Having thought that, Shisui noticed with annoyance the chill in the air, a semi-theatrical premonition of Things To Come as far as seasonal shifts were concerned, and he grimaced.

His cellphone buzzed again.

_Yes._

Really, Shisui told himself, shouldering his duffel with one hand, texting back with the other, and beginning to trek down the desolate, eerie-late-night-suburbia street to his cousin's house: He hadn't expected Itachi to agree to a caper of this inanity, but it was two - no, two fifteen - in the morning, and stranger things had happened.

* * *

"You know what it's like to starve?"

A pinched, shrinking feeling - a headache, a buzz in your veins because you forget to drink water until your blood tingles and rudely reminds you. What did you eat today? Two pop tarts. Well, that's not much, is it? No, it isn't, but you still don't fit into size zero jeans, which are too short for you anyway, so fuck everything.

Yesterday you didn't eat anything at all.

"Yeah, I guess."

Not because you're playing hunger games. You are not an anorexic; you're sick in the head but not _that_ sick. You just couldn't keep anything down.

* * *

"No, no, for fuck's sake, Itachi," were the first words out of Shisui's mouth. "Don't bring your _cell phone charger._ That is so normative."

"Fine," Itachi said, lips pinched thin, his whole body sullen under the dirty lamplight of his own porch, the plastic-coated cord still coiled like a noose around his anxious fingers. "You're the _expert. _What should I be packing?"

"Just ask yourself _what would Kerouac put in his duffel_, okay?"

Itachi gave him a blank, uncomprehending stare, and Shisui snorted. "Oh my god. I thought you took AP Literature? How can you not -"

"Shut up," Itachi said, tiredly, and shoved his charger into his bag with a glower that was probably meant to be menacing but just came across as constipated, in Shisui's expert opinion. "Let's get this over with."

And it stung, a little, in the shallower parts of Shisui's viscera, that Itachi thought of his adventures as something that had to be suffered through like a dentist appointment, but he bit his tongue and grinned. "The closest bus stop is five miles from here, so we'd better get going if we want to catch the 7AM."

* * *

It's a lot like a resonant tone, in a way. A single finger, pressing the E string to the fingerboard; the long, melancholic sweep of a well-rosined bow; and you can see the A string thrum, hear it helplessly echo on your cheap-ass violin as the thin E pinches your fingertip.

(Your violin, that you play because all good Asian-American children are supposed to know how to play a classical instrument and your parents, though a little more lax than most, are still _haha-ue_ and _chichi-ue_ at home - nothing so familiar as _okaasan_ or _otousan_ has ever blundered out of your mouth. You are a layabout, a curly-haired shame to your family, an A minus student (delinquent! truant!) but you are still, tragically, obedient.)

Because no matter how blasé Itachi may act, no matter how vigorously he may roll his eyes at Shisui's odd humors, when Shisui is thrumming with strange passions, when he's all strung up and vibrating like a wire under some mysterious bowman, Itachi is (helplessly) resonant. He is resonant to the note that plays in the celestial spheres, echoing in the aether, whenever Shisui's heartstrings are plucked.

And vice versa.

(Itachi, of course, plays three instruments perfectly: oboe, cello, viola. Such a fucking prodigy.)

* * *

" - so the conductor has to break up the fight, and the violist says 'He started it!' and so the conductor asks 'What happened?' and the violist says: 'He turned one of my tuning pegs and now he won't tell me which one!' "

It was the forty-third 'stupid violists' joke Shisui had made on the walk from the bus stop to the banks of the Charles river - a good, solid, two-hour hike down busy streets and sleepy residential neighborhoods - and Itachi was finally starting to look a little bit hassled, a little bit peaky, a little bit homicidal. And the sun was almost up, staining the glass skyline red and orange.

"Okay, stop me if you've heard this one -"

"Are you _done?_" Itachi asked, coolly. They loped like lanky animals in sneakers over pavement that'd be blister-hot by midday; Shisui's shoes were already scuffed to hell and back.

"How do you tell if a stage is level?" Shisui asked.

Itachi stared straight ahead, but Shisui could see the twitch of curiosity in his clenched jaw, and so he was not at all surprised when - about two minutes later, as they waited for a walk light at a busy intersection, cars roaring, a woman with a stroller shrieking into her cellphone - Itachi turned to him and muttered : "How?" (Almost too quiet to be heard against the city din - the delicious cacophony of bumper-car lives - but Shisui heard him, was waiting with bated breath.)

"There's drool coming out of _both sides _of the violists' -"

Shisui never got to finish the punchline to his forty-fourth violist joke, because the moment Itachi caught on, he punched Shisui in the gut.

* * *

You're an only child, so you don't really get the Sasuke thing. You never realized, before you began seeing Itachi regularly, just how un-cute little brothers are.

Sure, Itachi loves the little bitch. Patiently celebrates his birthday, patiently suffers his whining and attention-whoring, patiently encourages him to do his best in school - patient patient patient, saintly and selfless, but whenever Itachi can get away with it he slips out of the house to study in the library across town, work out where Sasuke can't follow him, cultivate his own life, _make out with you_. You think, after some serious navel-gazing, that you've figured it out.

Itachi loves Sasuke like he loves his parents and Konoha and the Uchiha clan: flawlessly, unconditionally, and without reserve, _because he has to_.

When he's with you, sure, he criticizes your fabulous dress sense, pinches your face, kicks you in the shins, and on one memorable occasion he punched you in the dick. (It was kinda your fault.) But he doesn't love you because he _has to_.

Itachi's feelings for you are messy, selfish, unkind; at times demanding, at times a pain in the ass, and they are so effortlessly real it takes your breath away.

So your wicked-selfish heart is reassured that you (and you alone) are the most important person in Itachi's life - number one in his affections - because even though he gives Sasuke whatever that little bastard asks for, you don't even have to ask, and that makes all the difference.

(It occurs to you that it's strange to be jealous of your lover's younger brother, but dating your cousin is weird by definition.)

* * *

The third day of dumpsters-in-alleys and sleeping in turns on park benches and getting gum stuck to their sneakers and paying for shitty fast food with quarters they mostly found on the sidewalk was the day Itachi dragged them both into the Prudential mall, into the food court, and into the adjacent handicapped bathroom, eyes a livid red.

"I need to wash up," he said, tearing his shirt off and striding to the sink like a prissy scarecrow, all messy black whippets and slightly grimy albescent skin. "Why the hell are we doing this, Shisui?"

"Why'd you agree to come?" Shisui laughed. "Come on, we've been having fun, right?"

"I don't -"

But Itachi stopped talking, bit his lower lip in concentration, continued to lather his armpits with hand soap, and Shisui knew he was actually taking stock. It really was fun, wasn't it? Just the two of them, floating through a massive river of people, cut temporarily adrift from everything but each other - walking up and down every kind of street, past tourist traps and skyscrapers and shitty parking garages, staring at maps and shooing away pigeons and Shisui'd intended to piss on the side of a parked car with some really obnoxious bumper stickers but Itachi had threatened to turn him in to the police, so there went that plan.

Even the shitty fast food was kind of nice, in a way - it tasted like the best fucking food in the world, they got so hungry.

"Oh, baby, do you miss your vanilla chai soymilk lattes with espresso?" Shisui asked, batting his eyelashes at Itachi's somber expression in the cracked bathroom mirror.

"Do you miss your cigarettes?" Itachi countered, raising an eyebrow.

"Nah, not so much anymore," Shisui said, lying through his teeth. "I quit months ago." Also a lie. "I mean, I told my mother I didn't see the big deal, you know, rather be hung for a sheep than a lamb, but you just try and reason with that battleaxe. Soon as someone says 'cancer' they just don't give a shit what else you're saying."

Itachi blanched even whiter than usual under his peeling pink sunburn. "I can't believe you can joke about it," he chided, frowning, and Shisui laughed at him again.

"I can't believe you can be so serious about it," he said, admiringly, and he didn't mind very much when Itachi wept for ten whole minutes into his narrow (narrowing) shoulder.

* * *

You once asked him, fidgeting on Mikoto's hideous carpet in front of the embarrassingly large Uchiha Itachi trophy cabinet while you waited for him to finish unlacing his Doc Martens: how the hell does he accomplish all this? And he told you, blank like a a static channel: "It's just easy when it doesn't matter to me."

It takes you a long while to sort out what he meant by that.

"So you'll throw a shit fit if I stub my toe, but stuff like international chess competitions -"

He bites your lips and that's distracting, so you forget what you were asking, but an hour later, lying under a sheet on his futon, while you're being the little spoon and he's being the big spoon and the rain is smearing the streetlights across his windowpane, and his breath is tickling the nape of your neck, he says: "You _broke _your toe," and you remember.

"So," you whisper, giddily, "winning trophies doesn't matter to you in the grand scheme of things, I take it." _But I matter?_

"I only worry about important things," he says, confirming your best suspicions, and presses a soft kiss to your neck, soothing away the ticklish sensation with his chapped lips.

It's one of your nicer memories.

* * *

"Want to walk to the Harvard campus today?" Shisui asked, playing with the wrapper to a drinking straw while Itachi sifted through his duffel bag, the two of them tucked into a remarkably fresh-smelling alley between two stark cement buildings. It was barely wide enough for Shisui to sit propped up against the wall with his legs extended - just barely. "You _did_ accept their acceptance, right? Please tell me you did. I know your family's making you go to the business school but it's _Harvard_, you'd have to be an idiot -"

"I accepted," Itachi murmured, dutiful to a fault.

"Well, you'll have to be there in two weeks anyway, for freshman orientation, so how's about we troll around the ghost town, huh?"

"It's not a ghost town," Itachi told him, huffily, and Shisui grinned up at him, mouth as wide and cheerful as a demented jack-o-lantern - a sort of comical, 'oh boy, here he goes again' expression. "Harvard operates a summer school program, and Harvard Square is a bustling, vibrant urban community with -"

"So let's go! God, don't make such a _production_ out of it."

Itachi paused, his stony demeanor saying nothing - it was all in the way he carried himself, the way his fingernails bit into his palms, Shisui noted. "In two weeks," Itachi said, very carefully, "you're being admitted for chemotherapy."

"If I make it that long," Shisui mused, pulling a box of cigarettes out of his loose (formerly skinny) jeans. "Can I borrow your lighter?"

Itachi's face melted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury, and he smashed the carton out of Shisui's hand with a vicious kick, panting harshly. (A few feet away, a pedestrian with a golden retriever walked by, totally unaware of their private incestuous drama; Shisui would have rolled his eyes but there were more pressing matters to attend to.)

"Why so serious?" Shisui quipped, weakly, and Itachi - filthy with travel dirt, frayed at the edges, smelling of sweat and smoky lust - pinned him to the ground, knotted his hands behind his back with something thin and pinching and plastic (maybe the cell phone charger cord finally came in handy), and bit him viciously hard right over his throbbing jugular. "SHIT! Ow. Motherfucker."

"Cousinfucker," Itachi corrected, mirthlessly.

"_Here?_ You perverted bastard," Shisui said, laughing and crying a little into the dirt. "Ow - _ow_ - Itachi -"

"Keep your voice down, please, I don't want to get arrested," Itachi said, his soothing voice dripping like oil into Shisui's ear, and Shisui bit the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming with laughter or hysteria or both. "I can't believe you. I've already given up so _much_ for -"

"Itachi," he breathed, picking his words and plaintive tone like a general selecting his best strategy, "my - my stomach hurts."

And just like that Itachi capitulated, pulling him up off the ground, fury forgotten, his whole being suffused with worry. He looked so contrite, so aghast with himself, that Shisui felt it was his duty to cheer the morbid bastard up a bit. "It's fine," he said, leaning into Itachi's chest. "Just pressed me into a rock, is all. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna smoke any more, I promise."

"Sometimes," Itachi said, with all the morbid depravity of a psychopath, running a fascinated dirty finger along Shisui's pinched cheekbone, "I want to kill you just so the cancer can't."

"...Kinky."

They got to Harvard eventually. Shisui had friction burns on his wrists.

* * *

You hear from other people that Itachi is the perfect child - sweet, gentle, intelligent, kind, well-dressed. Straight A grades, a brilliant musician, a gold-medal Olympian in the making, a flawless, self-sacrificing idol on a very, very lofty pedestal. (Specifically, your old lady won't shut up about how it's a shame, really, that you spend so much time with Itachi and none of his good traits have ever rubbed off on you.)

You think everyone's just abusing a free service. Itachi is like Atlas, like a Christ, willing and able to suffer their demands because they are too stupid to demand anything that would really stretch his patience, and you wonder why they never notice the cold, reptilian edge to his eyes when he smiles. You wonder how the hell he's got them all fooled - how the hell nobody notices his act, and why they seem to think that Itachi is an exception to the old rule: _no such thing as a free lunch. _You wonder if it ever occurs to them, as they take and take and take, that Itachi might be keeping score, somewhere in his labyrinthine mind. You wonder if it occurs to them that no one winds up on a pedestal that high through sheer coincidence.

You know that eventually, though he can never really be free, Itachi will choose his master: whether it's the Uchiha clan, or Konoha Inc., or Sasuke, or some third party yet to be seen, he will be busy eroding the foundation out from under the idiots who exploited him while you limp and cough your way through recovery (and if you survive that, police academy, but you're not holding your breath).

Everyone takes from Itachi, but Itachi takes only from you; you, the idiot no one else really notices, because you're a bit character in this story, with unpopular opinions and stupid hair.

You hear all the time about how Itachi is some sort of superhuman flawless martyr, and it makes you feel a 10% cocky and 110% special that you know better.

* * *

It was the last day of their little misadventure, and they were sitting in South station, almost indistinguishable from a bum who was kneeling by the side of the tracks. Itachi was probably the dirtiest he had ever been in his life. Shisui thought it looked kind of good on him.

"Hey," he said, intending to compliment Itachi's panache in the face of grime, but trailed off when the idiot simply reached over and grasped his hand. "... What the hell do you see in me?" he asked instead. "Why me?"

Itachi gave him a once-over - lingering on Shisui's polka dot denim jeans, inexplicably stained neon yellow shirt, puce jacket, faintly insecure crooked grin - and shrugged. "Maybe you were just in the right place at the right time."

_That's like the opposite of consolation. _Shisui nearly elbowed him in the ribs, but he continued:

"I'd never do this for _anyone_ but you."

"I guess, coming from you, that's like a marriage proposal," Shisui retorted, his pride slightly mollified. It was a fair answer. He wouldn't have asked anyone but Itachi to come with him, either.

"...It's legal in Massachusetts," Itachi said, levelly. Shisui started to snicker at that - yeah, it'd inject some much-needed redneck into the Bay State, a little gay marriage between cousins - but Itachi's deadpan was a shade more serious than usual, and Shisui realized that, oh, god, Itachi wasn't even kidding.

"... Wow," he muttered. "And you didn't even buy me a ring."

Itachi pressed his lips to Shisui's forehead, gently twining their fingers together, ignoring the wide-eyed stare of a pigeon and the stifled, giggling whisper of two girls on the other end of the platform.

"You're important because you're mine," he said, like he'd been rolling it around in his mind for a while, and if Shisui weren't so touched by that he'd probably make gagging noises, because _really_. "Humans are all basically the same, but you're the only one that belongs to me."

"Possessive, much?" Shisui said, grinning - Itachi's sociopathy was cute, in an awkward sort of way.

"Yes," Itachi said, his face lined with a litany of troubles far exceeding the weight of his teenage years, and for a moment Shisui thought that Itachi looked unbearably lonely. "Shisui, no one else can have you."

And there were some pretty fucked-up overtones to that, considering the fact that their relationship was not exactly romantic or lovey-dovey or normal by any stretch of the word. They barely ever saw each other, for fuck's sake. There was also the disconcerting fact that standard American post-murder-spree interviews with friends and family always went to the tune of "You never would've thought he could do such a terrible thing, he was always so quiet, so polite", and damn, if that didn't just describe Itachi to a T.

But Shisui didn't care.

"So. I guess that means cancer can't have me either," he said, his knuckles bone-white as he gripped Itachi's hand, and the afternoon sunlight beat down on the train tracks in bursts.

"Absolutely not."

"... Shit, Itachi, your parents are going to _murder_ you."

Itachi smiled at him, beatific, a grungy saint. "I absconded with you for a week. They were going to murder me anyway."

_Well, balls_, Shisui thought to himself, shaking his head, stifling an unpleasantly rough cough. He'd been so set on living out his last happy moments, building something pleasant to cherish in his memories as chemotherapy withered him into nothing.

It just wasn't playing fair for Itachi to offer him a future.

* * *

You're not quite sure if it was you who insinuated yourself into Itachi's life, or if it was the other way around.

You know how to starve, how to do without lots of things - food, parental affection, nicotine. You know how to get by, scraping out an existence just shy of inconsequential and just short of loved. You're going to be bedridden for months if you don't die outright, and Itachi really doesn't need that kind of stress, and damn it, you want to be a cop when you grow up - you want to be helpful, not a ball and chain in a sickbed. But you can't possibly be altruistic enough to break up with him, because although you were born knowing how it felt to starve, it wasn't until you met him that you learned what it felt like to have enough.

* * *

They hadn't seen each other for two months, after Itachi had walked him home and Shisui's parents had, after a truly vexatious crying jag, banned him from leaving the house unattended - please, like that could've stopped him - and it was four in the afternoon, and Shisui was getting sick of hospital food, so when the nurse left after giving him his pills he whipped out his cell phone and began to type. Remission was almost purgatorial in its boredom.

_Bustin outta here 4 Chinese food, u comin?_

He didn't have to wait long for a reply.

* * *

end.

A/n: Apologies, apologies. I will now go back to working on the next chunk of BYPWYM.


	2. the sortofsequel

Itachi is not the romantic type, and there's no one who knows that better than Shisui. The mawkish, brooding, Wuthering-Heights-is-a-perfect-love-story, Hell-is-other-people type? Absolutely. But if someone stupid and impetuous were to, say, give Itachi a garish pink teddy bear holding a heart embroidered with the words "I Love You", well, Itachi would burn it. In a trash can. (Itachi has no appreciation for ironic presents. Shisui is just glad the benefactor remained anonymous instead of, say, signing his damn fool name.)

Which is why Shisui has been racking his brains for an appropriate Valentine's Day gift for about two months. Because Shisui is the dozen-red-roses, scented-candles, give-me-back-my-Taylor-Swift-CD-and-stop-laughing-she-has-more-Grammys-than-you type, though he doesn't like to admit it, and it's their official five-year anniversary, and since Itachi is a freshman at Harvard and Shisui is a rookie police officer (read: traffic cop) in an entirely different county, they barely have any time to see each other at all. Ever.

And Itachi is probably just fine like that - living in the basement of the science building and dicking around with computers to his heart's content, surfacing for air when Shisui drops by with fresh fruit for scurvy and rickets prevention, spared from Sasuke's incessant texting by several meters of concrete - but Shisui is definitely a Hell-is-loneliness type. He's sure he didn't used to be, but that's what relationships do to you; worm their way into your soul until you can't do without them anymore.

_Are you free on V-Day_? he texts Itachi, pensively, on the sixth.

_Of course. I don't plan my calendar THAT far in advance._

Shisui pauses. _... I didn't mean Veteran's Day._

This time the reply takes a little bit longer.

_I have a statistics exam at 7PM. Shouldn't take more than 30 min. Plans?_

Shisui realizes that he is shuffling his feet and grinning like an absolute idiot and that the PD secretary - Jaundiced Janet - is giving him a perplexed scowl. _Yeah, plans._

* * *

After a medically tempestuous youth - Shisui nearly died - he's not technically allowed to eat overly-salted foods anymore. The doctor wants him to stick to fresh, organic, flavorless meals and has threatened to sic Itachi on him if she finds out Shisui has started smoking again. Shisui agreed to these little life changes with as much grace as one might expect - i.e., dragging his heels and bitching continuously - but now he's more or less settled into his diet.

(He had hoped to be able to take the moral high ground, but Itachi is Itachi, and piously went vegan to "offer Shisui some much-needed community support". Fucking swaggerjacker. If Shisui didn't love him, he'd hate his guts.)

And all of this would be more or less totally irrelevant, except it makes dinner reservations a huge pain in the ass.

There's a vegan pizza place and a tofu fro-yo place both within trotting distance of campus, but you don't take your date out for pizza or fro-yo on _Valentine's Day._ Itachi probably wouldn't mind, bless his puny heart, but Shisui is capable of shame. Eventually he manages to book a table at a semi-nice restaurant with mouthwatering tofu, because he knows the chef.

_Dinner reservations at 8:30. Pick you up at your dorm around 8._

Presumably Itachi is in the computer lab again, because that one doesn't get a response.

"Roughest holiday of the year," Fat Bob tells Shisui comfortingly from his desk across the hall, where he has been filing police reports and listening to Shisui try to make reservations over the phone for about two hours. "Hope you get lucky, kid." (Skinny Bob and Tattoo Bob are out on duty; it's raining cats and dogs outside, which is a step up from snowing but still completely miserable.)

"Tell me about it," Shisui agrees, stretching. "You doing anything special with the wife?"

Fat Bob glares at him, and Shisui remembers too late that one of the Bobs is married, one of the Bobs has never been married, and one of them is divorced. Shit. "... still on the outs?" he guesses, desperately.

Fat Bob's face wrinkles with sorrow, and Shisui sighs with relief, resuming his internal scheming. Dinner and what else? Getting laid, hopefully. ...But what else?

* * *

It's the thirteenth before Shisui can think of an "else" to give. Itachi likes eating food - hence the dinner - and Itachi likes Shisui, whom he's already 'acquired' many times over. But Itachi also likes coffee. Frivolously expensive, astonishingly fussy coffee. So Shisui gets him gift cards for every nearby coffee/tea house in the area and bundles them up in blood-red wrapping paper. They almost look tasteful. They are almost romantic.

... yeah, he was reaching at straws, there, but come on. Flowers are a no-go, chocolate is also a no-go (Itachi doesn't like sweets), date movies are an exercise in painfully awkward silence (because Itachi is easily bored, and when bored, likes to amuse himself by seeing how long he can go without breathing or blinking) and Shisui can't afford ballet tickets. Itachi is an avid reader, of course, but he just checks things out of the library and seems vaguely affronted when Shisui tries to get him his own copies "just to have around and write in and stuff". Itachi enjoys being physically fit; he already has a Harvard gym membership. Itachi is so fucking self-sufficient it makes Shisui want to puke.

Those are, actually, the first words out of Shisui's mouth when Itachi meets him at the door (Shisui is wearing his nicest clothes: a black dress shirt, a black blazer, black slacks, a very dark red tie. Itachi is wearing Armani, the bitch, and sort of makes Shisui look like a waiter by comparison.) "You make me want to puke."

"... I missed you, too," Itachi says, the corner of his eyes crinkling up in that way they do when he's making a point of _not laughing_, and Shisui's heart skips several beats. Itachi smells like his aftershave. His ponytail is hanging down his back like black silk. Shisui feels like a spectacularly inadequate trophy wife.

"Great, we're even," Shisui says, trying to remember to breathe normally, also making a point of not laughing (even though Itachi is carrying a man-bag). "Just a heads up, I got you a really shitty present."

"Well, you had to make the dinner reservations," Itachi says, absolutely unperturbed. "Shall we?" And Shisui lets him link their hands together and says nothing about the way Itachi hums off-key, because people are stupid when they're in love.

* * *

It's Cambridge, so they actually aren't the only gay couple in the restaurant, but Shisui privately thinks that they're better-looking. Idly, he chews on his steamed kale and watches Itachi cut his entire dinner into bite-sized pieces, arranging every bite with an approximately equal ratio of fried tofu, rice, and vegetables before placing it precisely in his mouth, chewing three times, and swallowing. Shisui wonders if Itachi can actually feel hunger.

"Is there a problem?" Itachi asks.

"No, 'm fine. How's your food?"

"Delicious," Itachi says, flatly.

"Really? Because you look like you're eating gravel."

Itachi pauses after his second chew to think for a few seconds. He looks Shisui in the eye and swallows, and then - thank god they're in a booth - he reaches across the table and puts a hand over Shisui's. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, contrite. "It really is delicious. I am just a bit nervous."

The idea that something could make Itachi nervous has Shisui breaking out into a cold sweat. Itachi does not scare easy. "Are you... is everything okay?" he murmurs back, running his thumb over Itachi's knuckles, narrowly avoiding putting his elbow into his soup bowl.

"Yes," Itachi assures him, and then pauses. "... Well, hopefully," he amends. It's times like these that Shisui wishes he could read Itachi's facial expressions a little more precisely. There is a very fine line between _was that potato a little off? _and_ Shisui, I just killed a man._

"Hey, I'm on your side, no matter what, okay?" Shisui presses, half-imagining some kind of international diplomatic crisis. With nukes. "I could - I could come around more? Or less. You know. Be more supportive. Or less needy. Or something." He pauses, blood running cold. "Are you thinking of coming out to your family?"

Unexpectedly, Itachi breaks into a grin, dissipating some of the tension in the air over their table. "I told you I was busy on New Year's."

"You said it was a term paper, you lying weasel."

"My father turned purple," Itachi says, recalling the moment with relish. "No, rest assured, Shisui, my family has been _dealt _with."

"Wow," Shisui says, a little bit choked up with pride, remembering how he came out to his own parents. (Via text message. They were not amused.) "So. If it's not a nuclear apocalypse, and it's not Fugaku -"

"Nuclear _what?"_

" - what is it?"

After muttering something that sounds like 'you say the _strangest_ things', Itachi gives him a soft, gentle look, the sort of look that effectively turns Shisui into melting butter and makes several parts of his anatomy throb. "Shisui."

"... yeah?" Shisui responds, voice cracking.

"Are you happy with me?"

This obviously isn't a "maybe we should see other people" speech, because Itachi's expression is sublimely hopeful, a smile flickering in the edges of his pretty eyes. They've been together for five years, so. Maybe...

Shisui blinks, and then slowly turns a nice, deep shade of totally embarrassed. "Yes," he croaks. This isn't roses, and it isn't scented candles and Taylor Swift, but it's... it's _his._ And it's romantic enough. "Really happy."

"Would you..." Itachi pauses, and Shisui's heart races.

"Yes?" he murmurs, hands shaking. Itachi's voice drops to a low, sweet whisper.

"Would you still be happy with me if I took a job with the FBI?" he asks.

* * *

"... huh?"

"I've received an offer," Itachi says, pragmatic to a fault. "Because of my work with database security -"

"... Yeah," Shisui says, with some difficulty. Where's the door to the back of the restaurant? "Sounds great."

"Shisui. You're very pale," Itachi points out, his brow wrinkling.

"Excuse me a minute," Shisui says, stumbling blindly away from the table. "I need some air."

* * *

What was he expecting? "Let's move in together"? "Let's see each other more than once a month"? "Let's change our relationship statuses on facebook"? Shisui isn't precisely sure what he was expecting, but he still feels vaguely wounded, and doesn't know why. It's enough, isn't it? Wandering around and ticketing illegally parked cars while Itachi turns into some sort of James Bond character isn't exactly fulfilling, but it's not like Shisui would ever dream of asking for more.

Because he is idiotically, head-over-heels in love with the most special person on the face of the planet, and as long as Shisui is at least a little more important than the gum stuck to the bottom of Itachi's shoes, then...

"Found you," Itachi says, quietly. It's raining a little; the streetlights from the main road are smeared across the damp pavement where Shisui is crouched, lost in thought.

"I don't really give a shit if you run for _president_, Itachi," Shisui says, vague but very passionate as his throat chokes up on him. Itachi is kneeling in front of him, trying to look him in the eyes. "I just... Whatever you want, you know?"

"I settled the bill," Itachi says, his smile a little bit rueful.

"Fucking great," Shisui says, and digs his shitty hand-wrapped present out of his breastpocket, shoving it into Itachi's hands. "Happy goddamn Valentine's Day."

"Oh, it's present time?" Itachi says. "I'll open yours first, then."

Shisui stares at the ground, wishing he hadn't run out and caused a scene (because Itachi hates it when anyone causes a scene), wishing he had thought of something a little more inventive than gift cards for coffee, wishing he could stop his hands from shaking. He can't look, but he can hear the paper tearing, the pause, the noise of comprehension. "Told you it was a shitty gift," he murmurs, in lieu of apology.

"It's very useful," Itachi says, interrupting his pityfest to kiss him on the forehead. "Thank you very much, Shisui. I'll be able to get a lot of use out of these."

Itachi doesn't say things if he doesn't mean them, not to Shisui. Shisui once again turns the sultry hue of embarrassed. "You're welcome," he mumbles. "God. I don't know why you put up with me."

_"I love you," _Itachi says.

Shisui (with great effort) does not laugh. "Well, that explains it," he says, cracking a smile.

"I simply thought that you should have a say in my future career," Itachi continues. "After all, not many people want to be married to an FBI agent."

* * *

"... What?" (Is it possible to have three heart attacks at once?)

"Which reminds me," Itachi says, pleasantly, fishing a - oh god that's totally a ring box - out of his suddenly very dashing man bag. Like he's been practicing it - and, knowing Itachi, he _has_ - he flips the lid open and presents it to Shisui with a dignified flourish. "Shisui, will you consent to marry me?"

* * *

It's platinum and it's very masculine and dignified and_ holy shit, it's an engagement ring._

* * *

"Way to do that completely backwards, asshole," are the first words to escape Shisui's gaping mouth. Itachi smiles at him.

"I'll do my best to make you happy."

"... Yes," Shisui says, after recalling that he hasn't technically agreed yet and feeling like he ought to get that out of the way before he continues to lecture Itachi on the finer points of not causing heart attacks. "And by the -"

Itachi takes the ring out of the box and slides it, gently, onto Shisui's left ring finger, which suddenly feels the weight of it, the reality of it, and these sensations are so important they rob Shisui of speech.

"Thank you," Itachi whispers, and presses a really-very-romantic kiss to Shisui's lips.

"... this looks really expensive," Shisui stammers.

"It wasn't," Itachi says, tugging Shisui to his feet. "It's a family heirloom."

"As long as you didn't mortgage your liver, or something."

Itachi laughs. "Come on, it's getting cold out."

"We're going somewhere?"

"I took the liberty of arranging a hotel room for the night."

"... _oh._"

It was the most romantic V-Day ever, Shisui thought; all three Bobs and even Jaundiced Janet congratulated him on the ring.

* * *

a/n: hahahaha. sorta-sequel. for v-day 2011 on bitter_nakano.


End file.
